


Erase the Dream (Rewrite the Scene)

by queenklu



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Companion Piece, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-15
Updated: 2010-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:12:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5x22 Coda, Dean's POV</p><p>Sam's last request, take care of yourself, and Dean's last request? Take care of the car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Erase the Dream (Rewrite the Scene)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Already Know (On With the Show)](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1480) by queenklu. 



> So this fic began MONTHS ago, as a Dean POV companion piece to I Already Know (On With the Show)--(This fic will probably make more sense if you've read that already, eep.) It was also completely written months ago. At least one month. Maybe a little bit more. Anyway, i hated it and screamed at it and procrastinated and finally (FINALLY) i have reached the point where it's not going to get any better. Er...ENJOY! :D
> 
> /ringing endorsement
> 
> P.S. Still nicking song titles from Adam Lambert. *headdesk*

Some days—a lot of days—Dean couldn’t make himself drive the Impala. He’d rather walk 'til his legs gave out and the soles wore through the bottom of his boots (kinda poetic, walking around sole-less in the state he was in) when sliding in the front seat felt like crawling into Sam’s grave, into his skin, into his arms, and Dean— 

   
Dean didn’t know why he was here, except that Sam had told him to go. His last request, _take care of yourself,_ and Dean’s last request? _Take care of the car_.   

   
There was no doubt in Dean’s mind that Sam would bounce back after Dean died. Maybe it would take six months, a year tops, but Sam wouldn’t be left flayed open and raw, crippled by grief and rage and bone chipping failure, clinging to sanity with cracking nails and the skin of his teeth. 

   
Sam was stronger than Dean was. Always had been. 

   
~*~ 

   
He was used to seeing Sam. Hell, he was even used to seeing Sam when he wasn’t there. Stanford years, every kid with floppy hair and a backpack made Dean’s insides go clammy and his hand itch for his keys or his phone or his brother. It wasn’t natural, but what the hell was anymore? 

   
But even in Hell, when his vision twisted with exhaustion and he screamed his shredded throat bloody for a Sam that was just _there_ , right _there_ , out of reach; even when there wasn’t a cell left in him that knew it was a hallucination, Dean knew he’d see his brother again. 

   
Now, though. 

   
Now he was one of those amputee victims who swear to god their toes are itching when they don’t have legs below the knee. Body’s so used to having something there it’s telling your brain you’ve still got all your pieces. 

   
So when Dean walked into the bakery down the street from Al’s Auto-body for coffee after yet another sleepless…week, well, it made a sort of sense that his bruised and delusional brain went _pie-diners-sammy_ like cherries lining up on a one-armed bandit. Or a winning shot of pool. The game’s rigged and the table’s warped, the ball would’ve sunk if he’d missed it entirely—it wasn’t anything profound. 

   
The guy behind the counter wasn’t as tall as Sam—almost, but no cigar—and he definitely wasn’t built like him. (This was his life now, measuring every single person that fell into his line of sight with Sam and constantly coming up short. Literally.) Sam packed—used to pack muscle on his upper half; this guy was lean, proportional, more runner, less linebacker. Plus he had some dumb, bleached, punk-ass hair and zigzag sideburns and a face like a pincushion, piercings everywhere, slate-gray eyes blinking at Dean behind more guy-liner than Dean would ever willingly admit was attractive. 

   
 _So brain_ , he thought as the guy’s lip-stud glinted, asking for Dean’s order, _how did you get Sam from this?_  

   
“Coffee,” Dean managed, barely. His voice felt rough from disuse; he wondered with a dim sort of panic when he’d last spoken. He must’ve talked to Lisa last night, right?  

   
“You want milk in that or something?” Pincushion asked, and it was strange enough to hear a guy like this mumble, almost uneasy, that Dean felt his mouth quirk. 

   
“Or something.” Part of the whole reason he’d thought he’d start buying coffee was so he’d be less tempted to spike it. “Just, uh, splash of whole milk if you’ve got it.” 

   
“Yeah, one sec,” Pincushion said without skipping a beat—of fucking course they had milk—and ducked behind the counter to grab an unmarked jug from the mini-fridge. 

    
 Dean stared at the baked goods and counted heartbeats. He wanted to grab this punk by the front of his god-awful pastel bakery polo and scream at him, tell him, _Fuck you, I’m not falling apart before five anymore, see? See how much I’m not falling apart?!_ He’d subscribed to Sam’s apple pie life and that meant not getting fired from the only place that would take him. 

    
 “Enjoy.” Pincushion handed him his coffee with a smile that should’ve scared Dean, somehow, instead of make his eardrums ring with the sound of what it wasn’t. 

   
~*~ 

   
Lisa had a fold-out futon in the spare room where she did yoga and taxes. Dean’s saving grace, even if it was unnervingly low to the ground. He wouldn’t have fit on her couch. And his issues wouldn’t have fit in her bed. 

   
He didn’t know how to sleep in a room without stale sheets and cigarette burns on the walls, with no one else’s grunts or snores or burrito-induced gas to break up his REM cycle. When he did manage to crash it felt…unsteady. Not real. Mostly he just dozed. 

   
And if some nights he woke up in a cold sweat because _Sammy stopped breathing,_ well. He was not wrong. 

   
~*~ 

   
It snuck up on him, missing Sam. Every single time, the same gut-lurch slam of buckling metal and broken bones as the Impala getting T-boned by a semi. One blink and Sam was behind the wheel and rallying the troops— The next blink Sam was dead. Like those red plastic goggles with the picture wheel that goes round and round and round, like maybe the next time he shoved down the lever the images wouldn’t be the same. 

   
~*~ 

   
Dean stumbled to a stop part way through Worst Band in the Universe when he caught sight of Ben tucked up under his arm, drooling on his chest. How many lifetimes had it been since Sam was that small? 

   
It wasn’t hard to connect the dots to failure— _ding ding ding!_ —especially since this was one of the few ways he knew how to earn his keep; He couldn’t cook, but years of cleaning guns got put to work scrubbing dishes, and a lifetime being a brother made him not suck at reading bed time stories. If Dean stayed away from certain fairytales _(three little pigs, red riding hood, snow white, sleeping beauty, Cinderella),_ those were chick stories anyway. 

   
Lisa mostly stuck pretty close when he was with Ben. Maybe that should’ve bugged him, whatever. He’d only ever raised Sam, and no one could say that had been a typical experience, or that he’d done a good job considering Sam wound up drinking demon blood, sleeping with a dead girl, and letting himself get possessed by the devil. 

   
So Dean tore his eyes from Ben to Lisa and croaked, “Now what?” 

   
Because usually when this happened—when this used to happen—Dean shoved Sam off the couch. 

   
Lisa smiled at him, hair falling across her face as she scooped Ben up into her arms. “You’re doing fine, Dean.” 

   
“It’s just, uh.” He wanted so badly to believe her it overwrote everything for a split, terrifying second. “When I did—when I did this before.” He felt sick, way down in his gut. “I was just a kid, you know? I was making it up as I went.” 

   
“Dean.” It looked like she wanted to reach for him, but her arms were full of Ben and Dean was glad. “That’s what every parent does.” 

   
~*~ 

   
Fourteenth time Dean went to the bakery for coffee in two weeks he thought about admitting to himself he had a problem, but Winchesters had never been big on being self-aware. 

   
And there, right there, the semi hit and it was him and he was the last and maybe that was good, a world without Winchesters, but what if it wasn’t and how was it all on _him_ to _—_  

   
He stumbled out for his break on legs that barely kept him off the concrete, hunched over with gasping, a pack-a-day smoker with a wendigo on their heels. 

   
 _Well, what are you gonna do about it?_ a voice a lot like his dad’s cut across his thoughts. _Find some worn out waitress or truckstop groupie and ask her to bear your child? So you can have a claim on normal?_  

   
Jesus. Was that what had happened with Adam? 

   
It felt good to run, get his body in synch with what his mind had been doing for months. It kept his stomach from heaving. 

   
The bell clanged. Dean skidded to a stop. Pincushion—whose “real” name was Prior, like Dean believed that—raised a pierced but pleasantly surprised eyebrow, and Dean thought about his own grave dirt ground under his nails and breathing real air for the first time in forty years. 

   
“You forget something?” 

   
Dean caught himself looking for Sam’s scars on Prior’s bared, sugar-dusted arms as he leaned over the counter to scan the floor. “No.” He felt like a junkie, every nerve rattling. “I need—“ He needed his brother, his family, he needed Sam to tell him what to do, he just needed— “pie.” 

   
“Pie?” Prior looked surprised in a not-quite-as-pleased way, finally clueing into the way Dean’s hands were shaking. 

    
 “You’re a bakery, right?” Dean’s laugh came out near silent, shuddery. “You have pie?” 

   
“Dude, sit down before you fall down,” he said, and Dean obeyed without thought. Prior was already at the display case, hand hovering inside like he’d stopped himself. “You have a favorite?” 

   
“Man, I don’t care.” Dean stopped, frowned. “I don’t think I’ve eaten in two days.” 

   
“Shit.” Prior’s grey eyes flashed, turned down towards the plastic forks. “Didn’t I hear you were living with that yoga lady and her kid? She doesn’t feed you?” 

   
“She tries,” Dean said, shoulders riding up like his grease-streaked jumper was the leather jacket it sometimes hurt to wear. “It’s not her fault I’m damaged.” 

   
“Takes one to know one,” Prior muttered, straddling a second chair as he dropped a pie tin down between them, for the most part empty. “Cherry okay?” he said like he caught something in Dean’s expression, “You’re not allergic or anything?” 

   
“Cherry’s great.” Dean dug in to prove it, ignoring the sudden papery taste on his tongue. And yeah, it was Heaven. Better than. Around a mouthful he got out, “You guys ever do the crumbly crust?” 

   
Prior’s smile was odd, tucked away in one corner of his mouth as he scooped up a bit of filling with his fingers. “Yeah, sometimes.” He leaned forward to keep crumbs in the pie tin and a thin gold chain slid from under his apron, flashing a small circular pendant. 

   
Dean missed his amulet so fast and hard it felt like getting shot. Just a little longer gone than Sam, and just as irretrievable. 

   
~*~ 

   
 _“Compassion.”_

    
 “That’s like.” Ben put his hands over his heart. “When you feel stuff, for people. Like you feel bad for them, because they feel bad.” 

    
 “’A deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering,’” Dean read off, then cleared his throat. “Yeah, good. Good job. Okay, _Myth_.” 

   
Ben pushed his lips together for a second, watching Dean. Then, carefully, “That’s something that’s not real.” 

   
 _That’s ‘cause Dad already checked under there, Sammy._

   
“Except,” Ben added, probably to the tune of the look on Dean’s face, “when it is. But I’m not gonna put that on the test.” 

   
Dean breathed in, loud enough he could hear the shakes, looped his arm around Ben’s shoulders and said, “’A story that can’t be proved, almost always including incredible or miraculous events.’” 

   
 _My life,_ Sam’s voice whispered around a crooked smile. Dean flinched, blurted, “Hey, do you know what Longpig means?” and tried not to look too relieved when Lisa called his name. 

   
Sam hadn’t given him a Plan B. Which meant either a stupid amount of faith on Sam’s part that Dean wouldn’t get kicked to the curb, or… 

   
What the hell, exactly, was he doing here? 

   
~*~ 

   
Dean didn’t go out to bars much—it made him sick, every time he breathed in cigarettes and beer and cheap cologne and his mind filled in the blanks to make Sam. Plus if he got in a bar fight there was a better than average chance he’d kill someone. 

   
He knew a field, about fives miles down the dirt road that followed Rock Creek. For a good long time, he went out there to cry. Big tough guy, right, out in the forest shedding one manly tear… Yeah, no. The trees got fucked up, the wildlife took off, and Dean cried until he couldn’t move, sometimes. Sometimes he’d wind up on the ground beating the earth bloody, fingernails breaking as he tried clawing through the dirt to get to Sam. Other times he fell asleep on the hood of the Impala looking up at the stars, let the heat from the engine bleed the ghost of another human’s warmth into his skin. 

   
Prior didn’t know anything about Dean. Prior was new to town. Prior was punk like it was a coat he could shrug off, like it didn’t define him. Prior drove a rust-orange Chevy Love on its absolute last legs, and Prior liked guys. 

   
Sprawled on the Impala, Dean thought about feeling hurt that Prior didn’t seem to find him attractive, or at least not enough to flirt seriously with him. But maybe Prior recognized there wasn’t anything left in Dean to give. 

   
That was a nice change. 

   
~*~ 

   
“Dude, eight A.M. already?” Prior grinned as he dragged a damp white dishrag across one of the bakery’s small tables. “Usually don’t see you in the evenings.” 

   
It always took Dean a split second to recognize he was being teased. “Yeah, just couldn’t stay away.” Then, when that didn’t come out quite right, he added, “The coffee’s too good. I don’t know what you put in it, man, but— Seriously, do you live here?” 

   
“Double shift. Someone’s kid has a ballgame.” Another grin—not dimmer, just different—aimed at the pair of eyes peering out from behind Dean’s jacket. “Who’ve you got with you?” 

   
“Uh, Ben. Ben? Wh—” 

   
Caught out, Ben gave him a shove and declared, “You were blocking the door!” 

   
“He’s good at that,” Prior solemnly agreed, and held out his hand to shake, “Hi, I’m Prior.” 

   
“Ben.” This close Ben’s eyes looked as big as hubcaps. “I like your piercings.” 

   
And that would teach Lisa to never let the two of them out of her sight again. Awesome. 

   
Prior laughed almost (weirdly) self-consciously and tugged at one of his earlobes. “Thanks. I, ah… I like your uniform.” 

   
Ben beamed and stretched out the hem of his Little League jersey for inspection so Prior could admire it, launching into a full recap of the game, complete with explosions and hand-gestures. 

   
“Can we get a milkshake for this guy,” Dean cut in when he paused for breath, “and coffee? Decaf.” 

   
“Yeah, sure,” Prior chuckled, and Dean followed him to the counter to pay. “Man, that one’s living the American dream.” 

   
It was a trick of the light—had to be _had to be_ —but he ducked his head like he was used to bangs falling into his eyes, and Dean was right back in under the bleachers chugging grape soda with twelve-year-old Sam locked under his arm, laughing and twisting to keep his Division Championship trophy out of Dean’s grasp. His ears were still ringing with the sound of it when he looked up, Prior’s eyes worried and all wrong. 

   
“—okay? Did— Hey, you can get it tomorrow if you forgot your wallet, no big—” 

    
 “No. No, I’ve got it, I’ve got cash.” Dean’s fingers fumbled two bills onto the counter, hopefully enough. “Sorry, just—spaced for a second.” 

   
“Don’t worry about it. It happens.” 

   
“Yeah.” More—or did he mean less?—often than he’d like. 

    
 “You said decaf, right?” Prior asked, voice low, eyes on Dean’s, asking something else. Dean swallowed something ugly and nodded. 

   
Ben had Parent-Teacher conferences scheduled the next day, and Dean had always known Sam was a sadistic fucker but shoving him in the arms of a family he couldn’t belong to and telling him to cling to them like a life line when— 

   
For a moment, Dean was so god damn hopelessly angry his knees almost gave out before he made it back to the table. 

   
Dean wasn’t a hunter, he wasn’t a brother, he wasn’t even a son. Orphan. Mechanic. 

   
“Hey.” Two plates piled high with golden crust and cinnamon apples and whipped cream slipped into Dean’s unclenching hands, and Prior said, “On the house,” like an apology. 

   
~*~ 

   
Ben was so excited about Lisa meeting his teachers, it took physical effort for Dean to keep him in focus. His eyes blurred with furious memories of Sam bringing home tests, scribbling down essays, curled around his summer reading like any moment Dad would rip it from his curled, protective grasp. He remembered Sam upside down on Dean’s hotel mattress with _Catcher in the Rye,_ and he remembered Sam braced against his laptop, hair falling in his eyes as he tracked down rugaru, changelings, anti-Claus. 

   
He was two hours late to work with no idea how he’d got there. The boss sent him home, where he waited, stock-still, for Lisa and Ben to bounce back in the door. 

   
It made a weird sort of sense that the first bar he walked into in a month would have Prior in it, and they played darts even though Dean had sworn off the game for life and Prior had the hand-eye coordination of a St. Bernard. Prior tried to make him feel better with about half the necessary information, bought Dean weird mixed drinks and a bag of his favorite chips, and somehow made a place and an activity that should’ve made Dean sick with grief…almost okay. 

   
Fucked him up worse than the alcohol. 

   
In the morning, he found himself with the newspaper cradled in his battered hands circling notices for apartments. There was an oddly decent one halfway between Ben and work, and his red marker scribbled a star over the corner. Then circled it. 

   
Sam said, _Find Lisa_. Sam never said, _Stay._  

   
Sam _never_ said stay. 

   
~*~ 

   
“Hey,” Lisa said, cooling oolong something-or-other in one hand as her hair tumbled over her shoulder. “I thought you were doing better. Since you moved.” She flashed him a quick smile somewhere in all that concern. “What’s changed?” 

   
Dean scowled at his cup. “This coffee _sucks_.” 

   
She laughed. “You know, I don’t even think I’ve seen you buy coffee here. You keep sneaking it in from somewhere else.” 

   
Dean’s heart thudded painfully before he realized the burning feeling on his face was a blush. He hadn’t blushed since—he couldn’t remember. He mumbled something unintelligible. 

   
“C’mon.” It bugged him more than he wanted to admit when she snagged his cup out of his hands before his reflexes could kick in; he hadn’t been out of hunting that long, god damn it. “Bert’s? Bert Aldman? Dean, baby, you could do better.” 

   
“It’s not— He’s got a guy working the counter now—“ 

   
Prior had been looking kind of tired these last few days, hadn’t he? Before the impromptu road trip. Before he’d fucked off and took his coffee magic with him. 

   
“Oh yeah?” She just grinned at him until he got it, blush racing down his neck. But it wasn’t—it wasn’t a good feeling. Dean’s stomach churned, acidic and cold. 

   
“Hey. Hey,” Lisa said again, catching Dean’s dirty, scraped-up knuckles. “Hey Dean, take a breath for me, okay?” 

   
He hadn’t realized he’d stopped. 

   
“I was kidding,” she said, quiet, looking every bit her age. “But it’d be okay if you did, Dean. It’s Prior, right? Your friend? You talk about him a lot.” He blinked at her. What the fuck else in his life did he have to talk about? “It might even be good for you.” 

   
She couldn’t really mean that. 

   
“He reminds me of S—” His voice gave out on Sam’s name, leaving a horrible and empty space of air, the grave that had been waiting for Sam since Jake severed his spinal chord. 

   
“Dean,” Lisa said, and squeezed his hands tight as she met his eyes and held them. “I’m going to ask you something, and don’t think before you answer, okay? Just yes or no. Is there anything that doesn’t?” 

   
~*~ 

   
Dean got blind drunk half-way through a midnight showing of _Frankenstein_ and called in sick in the morning, first time since he’d started. Maybe he should’ve gone in—he’d worked through worse than a semi-gay crisis and sheer boredom. Semi-gay because it was somehow…different…when all he could see when he’d looked at Sam was _Sam_ , not male. And when he looked at Prior— 

   
He’d never not loved Sam. The rest was just something that went hand and hand with—Jesus _Christ_ , how was he more freaked by being attracted to a guy than to his brother? 

   
Moot point. Dean gulped down scalding burnt coffee and wandered around his apartment, staring at every empty depressingly empty corner until his head started to pound. A lifetime on the road meant he had fuck all in possessions. He felt… He wondered if this was how Sam had felt moving into a dorm at Stanford. Like he was too small for a home without leather seats and a stick shift. 

   
 _You’ll never love someone until you can love yourself._ Dean was pretty sure he’d read that on a bottle cap somewhere. And while that was a long way off, shit, Dean couldn’t even invite Prior over for pizza with the state the place was in. 

   
He could do friends. Maybe. He could try. 

   
Dean had this extra room that came with the place, and go figure he’d gotten it cheap because the other tenants swore up and down it’d been haunted since some chick offed herself in the fifties. Dean did a cursory sweep before he put money down and a more thorough one once his name was on the lease. If there’d ever been a ghost in that room, she’d moved on. 

   
Which made one of them. 

   
Dean brought Sam’s bags in from the car, forcing his hands to close even though it felt like his lungs were blistering every time he caught a trace of Sam’s scent. Rock salt and cheap detergent, iron, sweat, Impala. He put them in the room, at the foot of the dilapidated bed that was never going to be slept in as long as he leased, then he went out to Wal-Mart and bought a plant. 

   
He’d work himself up to a goldfish, see where he could go from there. If the goldfish didn’t start slurping demon blood and offer himself up to Lucifer, maybe he’d start thinking about a relationship. With a guy. 

   
When Prior called, Dean couldn’t even make himself wait for the second ring to pick up. 

   
~*~ 

   
“Dude, what did I even tell you about that car? I told you _so_.” 

   
“G’head and rub it in, man, I’ll wait. Catherine Zeta-Jones is a babe; I’ve got unlimited talk and text.” 

   
Prior made Dean feel like the kind of guy he could’ve been if things had gone different. Not just mom-never-died different, because he’d seen how clusterfucked that worked out, but maybe…maybe the kind of guy Dean would’ve been if all the supernatural things winked out of existence on the day his deal came due. If it was just him and Sam trying to carve out a life for themselves in this one-horse town, and they’d wandered into a bakery one day... 

   
Assuming, of course, that Sam had decided to stick close. 

   
Dean shook himself and asked, “Where’d you bust down?” 

   
“I don’t know, ten, fifteen miles up Old Miller, outside of Tasken?” 

   
He frowned just a little as he told Prior he knew the spot; Prior had been gone a good day and a half but he’d only made it three hours out of town? 

   
“Take your time,” Prior muttered into the phone, and Christ, he sounded like a man who’d spent all night driving, “I’m gonna crash, so if you somehow miss the bright orange Chevy Love on the side of the road just look for feet sticking out over the tailgate.” 

    
 “Yeah, let’s see if I can get there before someone calls in a dead body.” Dean was already scooping up his toolbox and keys, not checking the filter on his mouth. 

   
“Aw, you’re no fun,” Prior said, a half second behind. 

   
“Also, you totally _lied_ to me about training Bert, you fucker.” Dean swallowed, had to take a moment and admit how pathetically bad he wanted to keep Prior on the line. “Whatever, I’ll be there in a bit.” 

   
“Thanks,” was the answer just before the tone, but it came through so quiet Dean wasn’t sure he’d heard it at all. 

   
~*~ 

   
Prior slept like Sam. On his back, face turned to the side, hands folded over his belly, worn grey t-shirt riding up. Dean the Hunter had never liked it, thought it left Sam too exposed despite the many times Sam had proven otherwise. Dean the Brother, deep down, liked the thought that Sam felt safe enough with him in the room to still sleep like a kid. 

   
 _Prior probably sleeps this way because he’s not used to getting_ attacked _in the night,_ Dean thought pointedly at himself, _or watched by a creeper come to fix his truck._  

   
He grabbed Prior’s combat boot and gave it a shake. “Wake up, starshine, figured out what’s wrong with the Love.” 

   
“Aint nothin’ wrong with the _love,_ ” Prior grumbled, waking up groggy as he propped up on his elbows. Dean let himself look, let himself catalogue things that were just Prior—the slope of his neck and the curve of his mouth, the way his hair was almost getting long enough to curl, getting darker at the roots—let himself think _maybe_ just to try out the sound, and accepted when most every organ in him screamed _no not Sam not Sam._  

   
 _Never gonna be Sam_ , he reminded them, and bantered back and forth with Prior while his body quieted down. He felt…not repulsed. But if incest wasn’t going to turn his stomach then— 

   
“What’s wrong with the love?” 

   
Dean answered without thinking, “It’s fucked.” 

   
Prior’s mouth quirked, eyes hidden behind his aviators. “The Love is fucked?” 

   
“The Love,” Dean said, switching pronouns, “is _fucked_.” 

   
~*~ 

   
Prior fit. In the Impala. He squirmed like he didn’t, like maybe he didn’t want to fall for a car that belonged to somebody else. Dean got that. He’d hot-wired an honest to god Aston Martin once when he was nineteen and almost cried when he had to give her back—fucking beautiful she might’ve been, under the radar she was not. And the instant she was out of his sight he’d felt so awful, spent weeks under the Impala making it up to her. But he still sometimes missed that car. 

   
Dean caught a glimpse of Prior’s thumb running over a Sam-worn spot on the armrest and swallowed nothing to keep from giving him the keys. 

   
“You didn’t get too far on this road trip, you know,” he said, careful with his tone. Definitely not thinking, _Sam and I would be two states away by now,_ because, well. Sam was further away than that. 

   
“Wasn’t a road trip,” Prior muttered, letting the window cradle his head. “It was a funeral.” 

   
The words made something settle in Dean’s bones, just under his shoulder blades. What did he know better than grief, anyway? 

   
It didn’t stop his knuckles from going white against the steering wheel. 

   
“You want to talk about it?” Dean heard himself ask, surprisingly steady. 

   
Prior’s mouth fell open just a little in Dean’s periphery, like he was caught off-guard too. Then, “Thanks…but. Not really. No.” 

   
They hadn’t had a funeral for Sam, nothing to bury; he’d just stuck a couple sticks in the ground and cried so hard he’d heaved, and Bobby’d had to all-but carry him to the car with blood-tinged vomit on his jeans. 

   
“Were you close?” The sinking sun burned blisters on his retinas, but he kept his gaze on the road. “With—whoever?” 

   
Prior let out an awful, aborted laugh. “Yeah, yeah we were, like—” 

   
Dean stopped breathing, moisture bleeding out of his mouth as he waited for someone to finish that sentence. Then Prior shook his head like he was used to bangs falling in his eyes, and ten miles later he tapped the tape-deck and said, “You like Zeppelin?” 

   
And they were fine. Or they would be, which was about the same thing. 

   
~*~ 

   
Prior looked better around people,at Lisa's party, less pasty and more badass, owning his piercings and haircut and— 

   
“Hey,” Dean asked as they maneuvered their way to the food tables with Bert’s best cherry pie. “You got any tatts?” 

   
Prior blanched a little—shit, some relic of the friend he’d lost—and Dean fumbled out, “It’s just, with the look—” 

   
“I’ve got one.” Prior’s smile was weak but there, eyelashes gold in the sunset when he took off his shades and tucked them in the collar of his tee, earpiece tangling with the chain of his pendant. “No place I’m ever gonna show you.” 

   
 _Yeah, we’ll see._ Toss-up if Dean said that aloud—he smirked like he had, maybe a little unsteadily; not that Prior noticed with Ben tackling his knees. Lisa was going to have to lay down some ground rules about eyebrow rings before the kid turned eleven. Some rusty muscle in Dean’s belly puffed up with pride. 

   
“You did good, Dean,” Lisa said later when she’d cornered him near the condiments where he was watching the two of them play. “Prior’s amazing.” 

   
He mentally tripped, just a little. “Yeah?” 

   
She nudged him with the elbow of her crossed arms. “Come on. He’s taking all this in stride like he doesn’t know there’s something to stride over.” 

   
“All…what?” 

   
“Dean,” she said, “ _You_. You’ve got to know… Dean, you’re a great guy, but being around you is like walking through a minefield. And he’s acting like there’s no other way he’d rather go.” 

   
She squeezed his arm with a warm smile and drifted off, but there really wasn’t anything left to say. 

   
Something way down deep crawled forward, watching Prior move with eyes so used to being bruised, and whispered… _Maybe_. 

   
It lasted all through the torture of pretending to know how to grill, that feeling, kept him from showing the boys just what he could do with a steak-hook after one too many good-natured jibes, helped him smile at the right places, got him to turn with a genuine grin at the sound of Ben calling his name. 

   
“Dean, Dean, you dropped this!” Ben was primed to go play, shoved what he’d found into Dean’s hands and took off before Dean could comprehend what he was holding. A glint of metal, black leather loops. 

   
The world went too bright, ringing deafness like a gun fired too close. 

   
 _Just as irretrievable as—_

   
But it was in his hand. 

   
~*~ 

   
“Dean, what—?”  

   
Lisa looked spooked by whatever expression was on his face. Probably for a good reason. 

   
“Where’s Prior?” His words came out near voiceless. He didn’t feel substantial enough for sound. 

   
“He just took off. Dean—” 

   
“No,” Dean said because this couldn’t be happening, this was an anemic girl in a white dress shattering his reality. He had to leave. 

   
 _“Dean.”_ She latched onto him hard enough to bruise. Sometimes he forgot how strong she’d had to be, raising a kid on her own. “Whatever happened, maybe you should cool off before you go after—” 

   
She stopped on her own, pried his fingers free of the amulet like they were made of clay. Stopped. One of the tiny brass horns had sliced across his palm. 

   
 _It’s like he’s haunting me,_ Dean thought, ragged and torn as blood dripped across his lifeline. _God—God I wish he was._  

   
~*~ 

   
Dean gave Prior the whole night to get out of town, fingers smudging the page where the symbol for Prior's pendant was etched in archaic black ink. Image-altering, anti-recognition charm. So whoever he was, Dean knew him, knew his face. 

   
A friend wouldn’t have hidden. A foe should have killed him by now. 

   
In the morning Prior’s place was empty. It was trashed, fist-sized holes in the walls, broken possessions strewn across the floor, but no signs of life. No Prior. 

   
He wouldn’t be at the bakery, either. But Dean was good at chasing, and it’d only be fair to give the guy a few extra minutes head start. 

   
~*~ 

   
Dean had always had a fascination with Prior’s hands, with the way he held a pen and which fingers he used to touch things and how he handled paper. Now, with Prior throwing kneaded balls of dough onto a tray like they had personally broken his heart—Dean felt justified. 

   
Guilty men run. But it doesn’t make you innocent if you stay. 

   
And there was no way—with the dark sleepless bruises and how Prior just…stopped…moving…when he saw Dean—there was no way Prior wasn’t guilty of something. 

   
So why hadn’t he run? 

   
Prior’s voice was hoarse. “You look like shit.” 

   
“My brother’s dead.” It was easy to say, like slitting a wrist. “What’s your excuse?”   

   
And Prior—god damn that son of a bitch, Prior looked at Dean’s amulet. The fifty-pound lead weight he’d been wearing since he could stand to let it out of immediate sight. Prior _knew_. He knew where to look, he knew exactly what to look for. 

   
“Nice necklace,” he whispered. 

   
“You like it?” Dean wanted to shoot him. And hey, look, he had a gun. “’Cause I’m really digging your own bling there, Prior. Let me guess—Macy’s?” 

   
He hadn’t thought Prior could get paler. If he turned and ran now, Dean wasn’t sure his bullet wouldn’t pass through him like smoke. 

   
Prior walked towards him with his flour-smeared hands raised. 

   
~*~ 

   
“Okay, now,” Dean said, “take it off.” 

   
They were in that field, and if Prior looked he’d see the torn grass and bits of dirt stained darker than the rest, but Prior didn’t seem capable of seeing anything but Dean. Not even the Colt, pointed straight at his heart. 

   
“No.” 

   
Case in point. “I’ve got a gun on you.” 

   
Now Prior looked scared. Now he looked like he wanted to run. It dragged at the part of Dean that knew how to kill, pulled like taffy. What had taken him so goddamn long? 

   
Dean wanted to scream, tell him, _I gave you time to run! What the hell is here that could make you stay?_  

   
“Sorry. Sorry, this—this was a mistake,” Prior stammered, eyes on the ground and his hands palm out, chest height. “I’ll be out of—I’ll be gone by—” 

   
“Did you leave this?” Inside his head he was snarling, tearing at the glass, but his voice came out so quiet. _So_ quiet. He tapped the barrel of the Colt against his amulet and thought—if he put it there, if he fired, he could lodge the little brass horns in his heart for good. 

    
 “I…I’ve never seen—” 

   
“Don’t you fucking lie to me,” he bit out, gun cocking in the terrifying steadiness of his hand. “Is this some sort of _joke to you_? Is this even the real fucking _thing?_ ” 

   
Prior said, “You know it is,” his slate grey eyes fixed on the amulet biting into Dean’s palm. 

   
And he did, that had never—it was as real as Sam’s arms around him after forty years in hell. He closed his eyes, raised the Colt and aimed between a blur of lashes. 

   
“How the hell do you?” 

   
“Dean,” Prior whispered, like rustling grass or legos in the air vents. “Please. Don’t do this. I’ll be gone. I’ll get gone, I promise this time. Please.” 

   
“I don’t understand why you aren’t gone _already!_ ” 

   
Because, God…everyone and their brother had left Dean eventually. 

   
“I just—” He looked bigger than himself, even with his shoulders hunched and his eyeliner smeared and two days of stubble growing in between his neatly groomed sideburns, and Dean thought—Dean thought— “I wanted to say goodbye.” 

   
Ohh… Dean was losing his mind. He’d never expected to make it this long, he wasn’t built to withstand, he’d never been strong enough. 

   
“Sam?” 

   
Prior looked like he’d been shot. “No, D—“ It didn’t hardly make a noise, and—and Prior never called him Dean if he could help it, because of _this_. “No.” 

   
“You son of a bitch.” He dropped the Colt to make a fist and slammed it into—into— _into Sam, god, Sam, oh god_ — “You son of a _bitch_.” 

   
He hit Sam again and when Sam fell Dean caught him, the way he’d been made to, and Dean would’ve kept pounding Sam until judgment day but his eyes caught a glint of gold and his fingers tore the pendant off. He felt Sam jerk in his grasp and wanted to do it a hundred times over. 

   
And it was Sam. It was Sam, of course it was, under that eyeliner and—Jesus, were those piercings even real? Dean pawed at him, felt the bristle of beard and under that Sam’s skin, Sam’s cheekbones, Sam’s eyes smudged with makeup, and under all that Sam’s _scent_ , and—and Dean was still snarling at him and at the tears blurring his vision but, Jesus, he had no idea what he was saying, could’ve been anything. Could’ve been everything. 

   
Sam’s mouth on his should’ve been more of a surprise. He knew Sam expected it to be, expected Dean to back off and freak out at a more brotherly space instead of open instantly and breathe deep. 

   
“What—“ Sam looked like a unicorn had just pranced by and farted a rainbow. 

   
“Stupid _fucking_ bastard,” Dean shouted as loud as his raw voice would go. Then he knocked Sam on his ass and followed him down, straddled his waist and pinned his wrists to the dirt. “How are you even _here?_ ” 

   
And Sam actually gaped, like that had been the one question he hadn’t thought to ask himself. Or maybe, with his fingers curling to get at Dean’s skin, that had been the only question he’d had an answer to all along. 

   
~*~ 

   
“What’s in here?” Sam walked into the spare room before Dean could stop him, and it made his skin crawl. Sam there, Sam’s face, with his ghost’s things in a ghost’s room. He didn’t—he didn’t know how to touch casual, wound up with an awkward and bruising grip on his brother’s forearm as he hauled him back into a room with a plant, god damn it. 

   
“Whoa…kay?” Sam said, letting himself be moved until it looked like Dean was about to hit a wall. “Hey, hey, what is this?”   
 

“Nothing. Just c’mere.” He pushed up the hem of one of Prior’s shirts (it still felt like Sam in Prior’s clothing; Where the hell were the layers and hoodies and weird button-ups? He kind of missed them. On the other hand—skin-tight.) until he could see their tattoo. When Sam wore the pendant it looked like a skull surrounded by tribal designs and barbed wire. Now, with the charm tucked in the hip pocket of Sam’s artfully ripped jeans, Dean traced the inky lines of the pentagram with his thumb and tried not to think. 

   
Sam shivered under his touch, whispered, “I missed you. Every day, I missed you. Even when you were right there.” 

   
"I don’t know how to sleep without you farting in the middle of the night,” Dean said— _No chick flick moments_ to the bitter end—and Sam tipped his head back to laugh.

  
The End  
 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Already Know (On With the Show)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/117177) by [queenklu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu)




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